Under the guidance of the Ministry of Culture and organized by the Culture Section of the Taipei Representative Office in the United Kingdom, the Taiwan Film Festival Edinburgh will run online from September 18th to 27th. With a focus on the development and history of Taiwanese film and covering a variety of regions and time periods, the 20 films on show will lead British audiences through a skim across the history of Taiwanese film while constructing a cultural impression and interpretation of Taiwan.
In response to the pandemic, the festival has moved online, with the Culture Section inviting currently-Britain-based emerging curators Liu Guanping and Qiu Yijie to plan the program in cooperation with filmmakers and organizations in Scotland.
The 20 films are presented across seven categories –Taiwanese Hokkien-Language Films & the Genres; A Borrowed Hong Kong, the Imagined China in Taiwan and Trans-regional Cinema; Melodrama Divas; Taiwan New Cinema and its Legacy; Midi Z Selection; Docs: Exploring Diversity in Pursuing the Taiwanese Identity; Shorts: The Unusual Usual.
Spanning from the 1960s to today, the films are works by some of the heavyweights of Taiwanese film, including Pai Ching-jui, King Hu, Li Hsing, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Midi Z. Genre-wise, they cover Taiwanese-language film, costume dramas, new cinema, short films, documentaries, and the love stories of Chiung Yao, presenting the full scope of the uniqueness of Taiwanese film in both the Sinosphere and the post-war East Asian cultural world. Half of the carefully selected titles are UK premieres.
In addition to screenings, the Festival also hosts Q&As and panel discussions, hoping to build a platform for filmmakers in Taiwan and audiences in the UK to connect and also to foster the cultural exchange between Taiwan and Europe, according to the organizer.
The Taiwan Film Festival Edinburgh is being held in cooperation with Festival Scope, an online streaming platform that has worked with some 80-plus major film festivals around the world. Screenings are restricted to Britain (specifically England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland). For more information, please see the website here.